


The amber of the moment

by zipadeea



Category: Agent Carter (TV), Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Spoilers, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Reunions, Steve is emotional, Time Travel, Time Travel Fix-It, endgame gave us everything i could ever want and i applaud everyone involved, peggy is a suspicious badass as she should be, that was exactly the ending cap deserved
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-28
Updated: 2019-04-28
Packaged: 2020-02-08 16:58:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,100
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18627421
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zipadeea/pseuds/zipadeea
Summary: "Margaret Carter does not swoon. She rises to the occasion.Which is why, one sunny afternoon of no particular importance, when she opens her front door to find a stranger standing there with Steve Rogers' face, Margaret Carter immediately pulls out her gun."***The moments before Steve and Peggy's dance.





	The amber of the moment

**Author's Note:**

> “Here we are, trapped in the amber of the moment. There is no why.” --Kurt Vonnegut
> 
> ENDGAME SPOILERS!
> 
> I'm still emotional. It all came full circle, perfect ending, I loved it. (and OMG i'm still freaking out over Cap with the hammer. omg it was just so good).

Margaret Carter does not swoon.  

She has no reason to  _swoon_. She is an intelligent, sensible, highly rational person. Her life and profession necessitate the contemplation of worst-case scenarios and how to manage them.  

She rages against stereotyping. She rages against sexism and the notion of swooning.  

She has never in her life been so overcome by emotion that she lifted the back of her hand to her forehead and fallen dramatically to the floor, hoping strong, muscular arms would catch her on the way down.  

Margaret Carter doesn’t often fall. But when she does, she is certainly strong enough to pick herself back up and move on.  

Most importantly, on the rare occasions Margaret Carter does fall, she’s been pushed. She’s been punched, bruised, beaten back both emotionally and physically, and she always  _fights back_.  

Margaret Carter does not  _swoon_. She rises to the occasion.  

Which is why, one sunny afternoon of no particular importance, when she opens her front door to find a stranger standing there with Steve Rogers' face, Margaret Carter immediately pulls out her gun.  

“What the hell is this? Who are you?” She fights to keep her voice even, but it still wavers. Because the man before her, the horrible imposter, looks so much like her Steve that it’s physically painful. A Steve who has aged a few years perhaps, with a few new lines around his mouth and eyes, and a subtle streak of grey at the front of his hair.  

But he’s the right height. His eyes swirl like the sea, as if they can’t decide if they’d like to be green or blue.  

And he’s smiling that impossible smile at her, that sad and honest smile, and the right side of his mouth has deeper dimples than the left just like she remembers, and there are tears in his eyes, dripping down over the bags of fatigue and the shadow of lingering bruises on his cheeks.  

He looks exhausted.  

He looks enraptured.  

“Hi, Peggy,” the man finally chokes out, and,  _God_ , it’s his voice, that’s Steve’s voice, and it’s been three years, three long, hard years, and the last time she heard his voice they were planning their dance, the first date that would never happen because he was going to die a horrific, lonely death to save the world and-- 

“Who are you?” The gun doesn’t move, doesn’t shake, but Peggy’s voice does, and her eyes have filled with tears. “Why are you here? Why are you doing this?”  

Steve isn’t here. Steve Rogers is dead, he crashed in the Arctic while saving the world, Peggy heard his last horrible moments over the radio. And they never found the plane, never found the body because it probably sank to the bottom of the freezing ocean, far beyond anyone’s reach. Peggy had nightmares long after he died about Steve’s bloated corpse, and the fishes eating his eyes that matched the color of the dark ocean around him, his broken body turning to silt and sea foam and-- 

Steve Rogers is dead. She knows this, she has long since accepted it as a fact and moved on. If he somehow miraculously survived the crash, her Steve would have moved heaven and earth to find her. He would have been sitting at the Stork Club the next Saturday at 8pm exactly waiting to dance. Waiting and hoping, just as she had been.  

This imposter is the cruelest joke anyone has ever had the gall to play on her.  

The man’s smile is gone now, replaced by a sad frown as he notices the tears on her face. He raises his arms slowly, as though finally noticing her gun, with something clenched tightly in his left fist.  

The man sees her eyeing it and silently extends the hand forward, opening his palm to display a small round disk.  

“I’m going to open it,” he says softly, and she hears the soft  _click_ before she even has time to react.  

It’s a compass. An old, old compass with streaks in the brass where the metal has been continuously clenched and brushed and worried by nervous fingers. A compass with her picture in the lid. A picture of herself, yellowed with age, painstakingly cut from a newspaper clipping. A compass Peggy knows Steve could never be found without.  

 _“I’ll always trust you to point me in the right direction.”_  

If she picks the compass up and turns it over, Peggy knows she will find Steve’s initials carved onto the bottom.  

Margaret Carter does not swoon.  

She is an intelligent, sensible, highly rational person; so, of course, she points her gun away and gently sets in on the side table before throwing herself into Steve’s arms.  

“How?” She whispers into his chest, shuddering with his own hitching sobs. “How are you here?”  

And if, perhaps, she is overcome with emotion in that moment—if maybe she wouldn’t be completely upright without Steve’s arms wrapped so tightly around she nearly can’t breathe, well, no one has to know.  

Eventually, finally, Peggy remembers that they are both standing on her front porch, the world thinks Steve is dead, less than a moment ago she had a gun pointed at him, and Peggy has outrageously nosy neighbors. She pulls away, but keeps her arms clenched about his wrist and pulls him inside. Steve shuts the door behind them.  

Part of her expects Steve to look around at her second-hand furniture and lack of trinkets, to judge the pictures on the wall and the home that she’s made for herself, but he has eyes only for her.  

Peggy turns to face him again. She can’t bring herself to let go of his arm, to let go of the pulse her thumb can feel racing in his uncovered wrist. “How, Steve? We—I thought you were dead. You've been gone for years.”  

Steve laughs wetly at that, like she’s made some sort of ironic joke, and raises the hand not currently trapped by her to cup her cheek. His familiar calloused thumb wipes away the tears, but more just come to replace them.  

Steve is here. He’s right here. He is alive, in her house. He came back.  

He came back to her.  

“It’s a long story, Peggy.” 

Peggy leans her head into the hand and reaches up to cover it with her own.  

“I think we have the time.”  

And Steve,  _her_ Steve, smiles that sad and honest and hopeful smile as the tears return to his eyes and he pulls her in to hold her close.  

“Yes,” he whispers. “We do.” 

**Author's Note:**

> So like, the time travel still feels a little confusing to me in this movie. But, it seems like any alternate universes or rifts created were undone when Steve brought back the infinity stones to the time they were stolen from. The only change he made was going back to live out his life and be Peggy's husband. BUT, that technically always happened. so, like, the MCU prime universe is the universe where Steve always went back in time to be with Peggy, it didn't cause an alternate timeline because it always WAS the timeline, which meant Steve could be sitting on the park bench by the lake 80 years/five seconds later, which makes me very emotional. At least, I think so. 
> 
> Okay, so that means old steve was always in the shadows and he knew everything that was going to happen, but he also knew it would work out so i'm deciding not to find any part of it problematic because Steve Rogers deserves to retire and Peggy deserves a happy ending. They got to finally dance guys I'm still teary over it. 
> 
> Anyway, sorry for my rambles, hope you liked the fic.


End file.
